Perdido 03

Saturday, April 11, 2015

Arthur Goldstein: The Cuomo Teacher Evaluation System Is A Sham

Starting in the fall, for the third year in a row, New York City
teachers will be judged by a new evaluation system. Gov. Cuomo suggests
we don’t want to be evaluated like professionals, but that’s wrong. What
we want is to be evaluated using a reasonable system that will help us
improve.

There is no evidence that evaluating teachers based on gains in student
test scores will improve teacher quality. The American Statistical
Association estimates teachers affect test scores by a factor of 1% to
14% , and that evaluating teachers by scores may actually reduce
quality.

Another problem is the way New York’s tests are scored. When John King
announced 70% of students would fail new Common Core-based tests before
they were given, the state Education Department took the graded tests
and set the cut scores so they did.

These tests are rigged to produce whatever results the pols want — and
right now they want public schools and teachers to look bad. It is
absurd that the governor finds these tests unsuitable to rate children
but acceptable to rate teachers.

Arthur Goldstein on using outside observers to rate teachers:

As for outside observers — another supposed advance in the new system —
will they know that I’m not calling on Jenny in the back because she
just arrived from El Salvador in the last week, has missed six months of
instruction and I don’t wish to humiliate her? How will they know that,
though I’m incredibly busy, I’ve offered to teach an additional class
to help newcomers catch up?

They won’t. They will take everything out of context, which is the worst possible way to judge an educator’s work.

A sham system indeed.

But of course, that's by design.

Governor Cuomo was unhappy that his previous redo of the teacher evaluation - which he bragged was "state of the art" early on - didn't produce as many fired teachers as he wanted.

So now we have the latest iteration that he has imposed in the state budget.

The aim here is to rate more teachers "ineffective" and fire them.

Alas, no one knows exactly how this will be achieved because the internals of the system have yet to be designed or revealed - NYSED has until the end of June to work that out.

This is going to be another half-assed rush job, just like a previous iteration that got shoved through under the pressure of the Race to the Top money.

This one's got little support outside of Cuomo himself and his charter school supporters (who won't actually be a part of the evaluation system!) so when the system falls apart (and make no mistake, an evaluation system that is half-baked and rushed into implementation will fall apart), we'll be back here again in a couple of years looking to find a way to evaluate teachers.

By that time, I hope we have some politicians of conscience (ha!) who will push to develop a system that is like the one Arthur Goldstein says he wants - one that is fair and meant to drive improvement, not one that is a "gotcha" system meant to fail (and fire) many.